Imagine working as a supervisor at a retail store, and part of your job is closing. If you needed the store manager to help you with some of the closing tasks but he was in no rush to help and occupied himself with other things while you waited around for an hour, would you be happy you’d be getting overtime or upset that you missed your bus?

In this story, one supervisor is in this situation, and she is sick of the store manager’s behavior. It’s not like it was a one time thing. This keeps happening, and it’s getting to the point where she ends up working late at night even on days when she has to be at work early the next day.

But that’s just one of the crazy retail tales you’ll hear about in this story. There’s also a story about a customer with a really weird complaint.

Let’s read all the details.

Tales from a Checkout Supervisor

I’m a checkout supervisor for a UK supermarket/Greengrocers well known for it’s love of the colours green and yellow.

Characters –

Me – Me

SGM – Store Manager

SGM is Notorious for being forgetful/uncaring about the people responsible for closing down, often taking 30 minutes longer than normal to finally get down there.

Here’s a rundown on what OP’s job entails.

So as part of my job, I am responsible for opening and closing the store, cleaning the department down, emptying the tills of all their excess cash, along with all the cash pouches from the machines that hold larger notes such as £20/£50 notes.

I also have to count every till and empty the Self Scan Machines at the end of the night. all of this should be done before the end of my shift at 9.30pm (the store closes at 9pm).

So i usually start this at about 8pm to make sure I’m ready.

We also have to do all this while handling supervisor requests from our cashiers and operating the customer service desk including processing refunds and queries.. However, on these two occasions, We’ve been having issues with our cash office so the tills are fuller than normal, and many of the cash machines are full also.

OP agreed to cover an extra shift.

Night 1 – The thursday

So on this day, I was called in on my day off because my colleague had phoned in sick, and another member was off with a bereavement so I agreed to come in, thinking it’d be a nice quick shift over and done with etc.

Boy was I wrong.

After the busiest evening for a while, with SGM taking a member of my staff for another department that has once again failed to cover it’s shifts properly, I’ve finally got the store closed and I’m ready to start emptying the self scan machines.

But OP couldn’t get started until the SGM showed up.

The time at this point was 9.15pm, so I go call my sgm to come down as it’s a dual control procedure in order to protect the company and myself from theft/robbery as we’re handling up to £20,000 or more in cash at a time.

SGM “Hello?”

Me “I’m ready to empty the self scans when you are”

SGM “Ok, On my way”

Me “Ok”

click

OP could only wait so long.

9.30pm comes… no sign of him..

So I start emptying the machines anyway, taking care to expose my hands to the cameras at all times, not scratching any itches, or touching my pockets while doing this, just to cover my back.

9.45pm I call SGM again.

Me “I’m ready to take the cash up to the office. Just waiting on you”

SGM “Yeah, I’ll be there in a minute”

click

This guy really is forgetful, or at least not at all punctual.

10pm.. still waiting, Now half hour over my shift end and I’ve missed two of my buses and now not going to get home before midnight unless I get out in the next ten minutes.

So I call him again… after seeing him walking around the store with the night manager for the past twenty minutes.

SGM “on my way, sorry”

It took him long enough!

10.15pm he finally shows up. We get to the office and put the cash into the safe.

No apologies for keeping me waiting for nearly an hour, nothing.

Nevermind the fact that I came in on my day off as a favour to him and he didn’t have the decency to do his job properly.

Jump forward to a few days later.

Night 2 – The Monday

So this is the monday after, I’ve spoken to my personnel manager over the weekend, and she’s spoken to him and apologised, with assurances that it wont happen again.

Now on this day, we’ve again had issues with the office, so the tills are very full and I’m running late counting the tills as I have to count all the cash I remove by hand, using scales, then label, bag and date the cash with the till number, store number, name, date etc.

All of which meant that I didn’t finish counting until about 9.50pm.

Let’s see how this goes.

Again, I call the SGM.

SGM “Hello?”

Me “Ready to finish up with the self scans and Cash Handlers”

SGM “be there soon”

I’m not sure what his definition of “soon” is, but he wasn’t there soon.

10.10pm.. No sign of him at all.

Apparently he’s in the warehouse chatting to a manager, according to one of the night guys, so I say sod it. Time to start counting cash again..

10.30pm.. I’ve finished emptying the Self scans and the Cash Handlers, still no sign of him, so I call him again, and once again his response is.. SGM “Be there in a minute”…

10.25pm SGM finally comes down and asks why the department isn’t completely cleaned down.

This guy seems clueless.

SGM “why is your department in such a state?”

me ” My team finished at 9.30pm, and I only had two left at that point due to sick calls + you taking staff for other departments, both of them stayed until 9.45 to get as much done before they went as they could, while I’ve been busy counting out almost £50,000 in cash on my own, which I couldn’t exactly ditch to go clean”

SGM “Oh.”

So we go close up, putting the cash into the office and closing/locking it up.

OP has made a decision.

This gets us to 11pm when I finally swipe out, and I have to be in at 6am the next morning.

At this point, It’s now been three months of this happening to myself and my colleagues in my team.

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And we’ve all started to show signs of the stress from finishing so late with him, and starting so early the next morning while also being expected to handle an enormous amount of cash on our own, exposed to the risk of being robbed/assaulted for it..

So I’ve made the decision to put in a formal Grievance, which will go through our area Manager who happens to be a decent guy and should be able to help.

But wait, there’s more!

Bonus story from the customer service desk short and quick!

Me

WOL – Weird Old Lady

WOL comes up to the service desk while I’m working through my latenight paperwork

Let’s see what she wants.

WOL “Excuse me, I have a question about this toilet roll”

Me “oh? What do you need to know”

WOL Completely serious “Why doesn’t it have an expiration date on it? Don’t you know everything has to have a use by date on it? it’s the law!”

It’s definitely not illegal.

me “Err, It’s essentially just paper, It’s not to be consumed, it wont expire any time soon unless you store it in a damp or wet place”

WOL “Well, It’s still illegal and I’ll be reporting you to the police!”

me “It’s not illegal not to have a sell by date on a pack of toilet roll, However if you’d like to involve the police, Here’s the number for head office who I’m sure I can direct you to our legal department, Have a good day!”

Wow! A lazy manager and a crazy customer.

If you enjoyed this post, check out this story about a grocery store employee who is fed up after months of going above and beyond for no monetary return.

Let’s see what Reddit has to say about all this drama.

This is funny!

Here’s another comment about the crazy customer.

Here’s a suggestion about the store manager.

This is a good point.

Working retail can certainly come with challenges, and this person definitely illustrated how those challenges can come both from customers and coworkers. While the customer’s issue was pretty crazy, the coworker just seemed lazy. Or perhaps he was very easily distracted or just didn’t really care if he was inconveniencing anyone else.

I definitely think it’s a good idea to escalate the situation and report the manager. His actions are directly impacting her work day in a negative way, and that’s not okay.

In this story, perhaps dealing with the annoying manager is actually easier than dealing with the annoying customer. In theory, the manager will be reprimanded for causing employees to work late, but there’s no hope of fixing a customer’s crazy misconception about toilet paper and expiration dates. And even if you could, there’s always going to be another crazy customer.

It’s stories like these that make me glad I don’t work retail.